Mareham Le Fen

     As you may recall, William and Rebekah Sharpe packed up their nine children, ranging in age from an infant to a 20-year old in 1869 or 1870 and moved to America. According to the 1861 English census, William farmed 28 acres in England. In America thanks to the Homestead Act, he could for a minimum amount and a promise to farm the land, attain 160 acres. The bill also provided a pathway to citizenship.

Drew, Erin, Lee and I walk around the Royal Oak in 2009.

Interior of Royal Oak - 1981

Interior Royal Oak - 2009

    And in the intervening century and a half, Sharpe descendants have been making the trip to the English homestead. It is known that Betsy Sharpe and her husband, Edward Walker, made maybe 3 trips back to England to see Edward's family in Chester, England. But I don't know if they made their way across England to the Sharpe homestead.

     But thanks to items that Laura and Dorothy Leib collected, I can tell you of two early trips in addition to my family's in 2009.

    These two photographs show the interior of the Royal Oak. I couldn't tell if the woman at the bar is Laura or Dorothy or a local patron. But in both photographs you can see the barrels that make up the bar. Betsy's nephew, son of her brother James, sailed across the ocean and visited the pub in 1964. His and his wife's notes from that visit said the homestead was now a pub, but according to a listing below the thatched building has been an inn since the 14th century.





Royals Oak's listing on the web

    The following 3 photographs show the side view of pub. It's clear in the 1964 one and the 2009 one that there is a French door on the side. It's not quite as clear in the 1981 one. The windows are all in the same places and the chimney is also. The distinctive thatched roof is apparent in the two earlier ones and not as clear in the 3rd because of its angle.

Royal Oak in 1964.

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Side view of the Royal Oak in 1981.

Drew standing outside the Royal Oak in 2009.

Rear view of the Royal Oak in 1964.

   The next two photographs show the rear of the pub. From what I can tell the Sharpes would have lived in the two-story wing attached to the rear. My thought is that the 1964 photograph shows pretty much what the house would have looked like in the 19th century.

     In the last 50 years there have been some changes and the central chimney is now gone and a small addition has been added above the back door where the despondent man is standing in 2009. But if you look above Lee you can see the thatched roof is still there.



    In the last photograph taken in 2009 you can see the distinctive top of the roof is still present. Not quite as neatly as in the past, but still visible. Maybe England has a dearth of thatch roof tradesmen.

Rear view in 2009.

Royal Pub front view in 2009.

Royal Oak - Sharpe Family Home

Book to Avoid Disappointment

Royal Oak Pub - Mareham le Fen

    In working on a longer post (which I hope to have up soon), I noticed this sign outside the old Sharpe homestead in England. And the guy in the doorway appears to have forgotten to book.

Draper Talman Schoonover

     In contrast to Edna Walker, who was a child of English immigrants, only Edgar Burkhardt’s grandfather was an immigrant. On the other hand, Benjamin (van) Schnoover, Edgar’s great-great grandfather, served in the American Revolution as a captain. The New York native, contrary to family lore, was not a Hessian. And neither were the Burkhardts as they didn’t make it to the US until the second decade of the 1800s. 

EA, Draper Schooover and Delphia Schoonover Burkhardt in 1929.

   Edgar’s mother, Philadelphia, known as Delphia, was born in then Virginia in 1862 as was her 10 years younger brother, Draper Talman. By the 1880’s the family had settled in Fairfax in Osage County, Kansas. At the same time the Burkhardts had moved from Illinois to Fairfax. Both families farmed in Osage County, but Draper took a different route and graduated from Washburn University in 1899. 

Draper Honored by Washburn in 1929

By 1907 Draper joined Marietta College in Marietta OH as an associate professor, eventually becoming a professor of Latin. In 1929 Washburn bestowed an honorary degree of doctor of humanitarian letters on Draper. During his long tenure at Marietta he served in many capacities, as registrar and Dean of Academics. While Dean of Academics he chastised students about entering establishments where intoxicating drinks were are sold. They could face expulsion. He also served twice as interim president with his longest stint coming during World War II. According to a history of Marietta College, One of the great team players in MC history, Schoonover acceded and did his best to manage the place through most of the rest of the war.


Draper Schoonover at Marietta College

Mary Grace was known to say  that Edna, a college educated woman, often felt that her mother-in-law, Delphia, thought Edna put on airs because she had gone to college. Even though her own brother, Draper, had been instrumental in getting Edgar his education, his degree from Washburn. Draper, Edgar's uncle, had urged him first to attend Washburn Rural High School and then continue on to get his degree from Washburn in 1912.

One last word about Draper, he apparently was quite the woodworker as this September 2010 article describes:

"Students, a retired college president, a professor and a maintenance man recently converted to electricity a 96-year-old, wooden-geared clock. The clock is housed in a tower on the campus of Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio. Draper T. Schoonover, the retired president of the college, suggested the electrification. He had often cut new wooden gears for the ancient clock in his workshop. He and one of the professors made new cogs for the gears behind each of the four faces. One of the maintenance men cut new hands from plywood and students installed them with collars made from a used automobile engine-head. A special striking mechanism driven by a one-fourth horsepower electric motor was installed. Students wired the clock and once more it tolled out the time, this time driven by an electric motor."

Draper Schoonover Woodworker

I seem to have some font/format problems, but I hope you can still read it.

Our Tall Cousin Updated

This is a photograph of Kae Einfeldt who was not only an artist for Walt Disney, but more than 6 feet tall. I'd run across this photograph earlier, but at the time I didn't know who Kae Einfeldt was. It's part of a collection that probably was in the assortment from Cindy, some of which Laura and others had collected. From the left in the photograph is Roy Sumner, Kae's Dad, Kae, Homer Sharpe, Ada Fraser Sumner, Kae's mother and Sherrill, Kae's daughter.  My best guess is that the picture was taken by Homer's wife, Avis. The family connection is Homer is the son of James Sharpe, Ada the daughter of Roseanne Sharpe and Edna, the daughter of Betsy Sharpe. That makes them all first cousins. Homer and Avis traveled to England in the 1960s and visited the Sharpe homestead, the Royal Oak Pub in Mareham-le-Fen.

Continuation of 1119 Polk

 Scott asked if I had more photographs and these are all that I can find of the house. But in looking for these, I found a page that contained the second picture of the house on a card. A card similar to ones that were used as calling cards in the early 1900's - the words on it are Eissey Ande. I Googled that and came up with zip. I tried Google translation and got not much more. Eis is ice in German and Ande is something in Portuguese, but I don't remember what exactly. And to increase my frustration the card is on a page labeled from 1907 and no mention of the house being 1119 Polk.

 The interior photographs are not a great help because they were all shot with the windows behind the photographer. And the more I looked at the photos I have re-convinced myself that they are two different houses. The main reason being the chimney moves. It would be hard enough to raise a roof and add a room, but to move the chimney seems like a much harder job.

 Below are the card and the page it's on.
Also included are all the photographs, inside and outside that I have found.

 I will keep looking, but it may have to remain a mystery.

1119 Polk Street, Topeka, KS - Edward and Betsy Walker's Home

     The first photograph is labeled 1908 and the second 1911. When I first compared them, I came to the conclusion that they were different houses. For one thing, the house from 1908 has only a single window on the second floor, compared to three in the 1911 photo. Also the 1911 house has an additional story above the porch, including a set of windows.

    But then I looked at the bay window and the porch and they seemed similar beyond pure coincidence. The trim under the bay window appears to be the same. The angle of the porch is the same in both.Unfortunately the house is gone. If it wasn't torn down before the 1966 tornado, it may have been damaged or destroyed by it. In my memory this is in or very near to the swath of that tornado. 1119 SW Polk, Topeka, KS

     I've never found any evidence of the Walkers ever living in another house in Topeka so my conclusion is it's the same house. Sometime in the years between the photos they added on to the house. In my ignorance or arrogance, I never thought that people before 1950 would add on to their homes. A belief based on absolutely nothing. 

   If anyone has a thought as to are they the same house or are they two separate house, let me know.